King’s basic pay for the period from March 2009 to March 2010, including salary, pension supplements and bonuses, came to £3.35m. This was then topped up with a £4.52m gain on share options earned through a long-term incentive scheme.

The CEO owns shares in the supermarket giant that were worth £5.92m in March.

During the period, Sainsbury’s pre-tax profits rose to £610m, up 17.5%.

Finance director Darren Shapland was paid £3m, also seeing a substantial increase in his basic pay last year – up by 59% to £1.54m – and received a further £1.46m through long-term share options.

About 127,000 Sainsbury’s workers also shared in the company’s biggest ever bonus pot of £80m, but basic salaries for the grocer’s executive directors have been frozen for 2010-11.

At Sainsbury’s stores, like-for-like sales growth slumped to 1.7% in the 11 weeks to 20 March, compared with 6.2% at the same time last year.